Southern Moderate African American Issues

Posts Tagged ‘msnbc’

CNN has me thinking with an open mind about all sides of the healthcare debate. Everyone has a study about this and an analysis about that but I personally turn to CNN for balance reporting and to FOX and MSNBC for commentary. The following story exemplifies the type reporting I prefer. If you only listen to FOX or MSNBC, that’s your business and I hope your insurance covers the explosion of that vein in your forehead—simmer down now.

If folks spent less time yelling, the valid points about waste, tort reform and administrative mistakes could be heard.

I have always said that healthcare reform needs “teeth.” Not a dental plan but some hard decisions about the money this nation spends for healthcare that could have been avoided. i.e. the Diabetic who refuses to check his blood sugar level; your uninsured uncle who eats every and anything then gets rushed to the ER. Some of the money uncle spent on food and drinks could have gone to a basic health care plan.

We should brace for a battle because one person’s waste is another person’s income.

It is all about spin, knowledge and facts. The notion that the federal government will decide when Americans “plan” on dying is nonsense at the center of the healthcare debate. Sarah Palin chimed in yesterday that she did not want her parents or children standing in front of “Obama’s death panel.”

Stop right there and let me give my take on the difference between misinformation and lying. Sarah Palin, who I want to defend because we are the same age, is not lying in my opinion nor did she lie during the campaign last year. She actually believes what she is saying so she is at best misinformed or at worst dim and does not know it. Please understand the difference: one is to knowingly lie and the other is simply being wrong. When I saw those protesters on T.V. this week, I knew they weren’t lying and were sincere. The liars are the guys in D.C. on K Street and in New York on Wall Street and Madison Avenue who designed the campaign to mislead regular folks and stop health care reform for your corporate bosses. I must say that those guys are good at what they do.

At the center of this drama was Senator Johnny Isakson from Georgia…reluctantly. MSNBC claims that the heath care provision which would fund “end of life” counseling is similar to a provision originally introduced in committee by Isakson. I tried to find information about this claim on the web and on Isakson’s website. What I did find after spending a good part of my Saturday morning is that Isakson’s concerns with the Democrats proposals sound reasonable to me and that Isakson and others do have alternative plans. As a member of the Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee, Isakson is up on his game and we can count on him negotiating rather than just stonewalling like other conservatives.

Isakson and no other members of congress want death panels. From what I see, the optional counseling is an option about final options. Much of the cost of patient care occurs during the last month of life and some people decide to have DNR orders (that’s Do Not Resuscitate, not Department of Natural Resources for us outdoors types). If people want to talk with someone about those plans, their insurance would pay for the meeting. If you have buried a loved one, you know that people should consider deciding that stuff themselves years earlier so they can go how they want to go and remove family from making the decisions at the worst times.

In summary, spin-doctors knowingly distorted a provision in the health care reform proposal to scare old people and incite conflict. I must say that both sides play this game. When I was a congressional staffer, the Clinton administration bragged about reducing or cutting spending for a program in their budget. When I looked at the numbers, funding went up for that program over the previous years. So, program XYZ received $70 million one year and more the next year but they told me they reduced the rate of growth from the Bush years. Before, that program grew by 10% every year but under Clinton it is only growing by 5%–that’s a reduction. Do I look stupid? (Don’t answer that.) I told that guy that a reduction from $70 million would be less than $70 million and being cute with numbers and spin was not cool.

I am watching MSNBC and wishing that they don’t be come the left version of Fox News. Keith Olberman and Bill O’Reilly are both journalists to me but Rachel Maddow is starting to smirk in a way that is as negative as those people on Fox in the morning—two wrong does not make….

Shep Smith, currently of Fox News, is going through some things with the far right because he has evidently grown weary of twisting the truth and pushing propaganda—good for you Shep. It had to be Smith who announced that Obama was president on Fox News that night because anyone else’s head would have exploded. I am no expert but there is a line between reporting the news and facts as a journalist and some form of news entertainment that doesn’t follow the appropriate code of reporting ethics. (i.e. MSNBC’s the Ed Show.)

The one that gets me most of all is Michelle Malkin, blogger turn Fox News talking head. She is clearly a bright woman who at some point decided she would write or say whatever took her to fame and fortune. She puts me in the mind of southern political leaders from the last century who were raised loving their family housekeepers (who look like me) but would say the ugliest things about all members of my community who get ahead politically and get rich. The type who made a tennis court out of the local swimming pool the day the order came that Blacks citizens had a right to dive-in. That would be the same day I decide be a tennis player so thanks. If they turn the court into a polo field, I give up.

Like George Wallace, many of those so-called leaders would have a change of heart as their death approached; don’t want to explain that stuff before the pearly gates. To be fair, the hate speakers who look like me often have their change of heart also. A date with hell is a natural laxative.

Here something interesting: what is the first institution of higher education in America to admit Black students in 1835? Michelle Malkin’s alma mater Oberlin College of Ohio. But, they welcome her on-campus speaking dates because decent people like dialog and discourse.

When you are pitifully poor (old school Black college term), some decision must be made and people weight their personal integrity against pending financial doom; what profits a man to gain the whole world….

This blog acknowledged John McCain’s efforts to dial down the rhetoric last year; rhetoric that would compel the sickest minds to get on a rooftop and turn their baseball caps backwards…you know the rest. It’s good to be a moderate because the extremists on the far-left and far-right take recreational “hate speak” as a call to arms.

That blank blank guy who tried to hit President Bush with his shoes struck a nerve with me for a reason that seems to be escaping everyone else: the second shoe hit the American flag.

If I were the American president (use your imagination) and knew our flag was behind me, I would have caught the shoe or taken one for the team—that is the patriotic thing to do.That brave act might impress Tamron Hall of MSNBC and formerly of Fox News to answer “my” call at 3 a.m.“Yes Secret Service, if Ms. Hall phones…wake me…it’s an issue of vital national importance…this White House needs a first lady sooner rather than later.”

All kidding aside, I deplore this fellow disrespecting the office of the President.Yes, Bush allow his advisors to push him into an ill-advised entanglement in the Iraq, but I always gave him a certain amount of respect—an amount that reasonable Americans who supported McCain should afford President-Elect Obama.

For some reason, I would welcome Bush on a cross-country road trip because he seems like cool people.Rolling with Barrack Obama would be rough because I could not sleep in the backseat with the radiance from his halo in my eyes.You know what else is radiant: Tamron Hall.